Press Release: People v. Quintanilla, Guillermo, Jr., 8/21/09

Bradford R. Fenocchio

PLACER COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY

Roseville, California95678

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

Date: August 21, 2009

Contact:

Art Campos

Public information Officer

916 543-8076

Scott Owens

Assistant District Attorney

916 543-8000

ROSEVILLEMAN IS SENTENCED TO 30 YEARS, EIGHT

MONTHS IN STATE PRISON FOR MOLESTING GIRL

A Rosevilleman was ordered Thursday to serve the next 30 years and eight months in a state prison, but not before he was chastised in a courtroom by the mother of a 12-year-old girl that he sexually molested over a four-year period.

With head bowed and tears flowing from his eyes, Guillermo A. Quintanilla, Jr., 27, listened to the mother, his former partner, tell a PlacerCountyjudge how her family’s life had been turned upside down by the defendant.

“Other than murder, I believe this is the most horrific news to a mother,” the woman told Superior Court Judge Larry D. Gaddis.

The mother had been unaware of the molestation incidents and said she could not figure out why her daughter was suffering emotionally.

“I can still see the pain in her eyes that this man being sentenced has caused, yet I now know who the cause of it was,” the mother said as she fought back tears.

“For many years, I took her from specialist to specialist, doctor to doctor, trying to figure out where the pain was coming from. And all along, there was a predator in my home.”

The 12-year-old victim attended the sentencing and cried as her mother read her statement.

The mother told the court that she and her children had been “hounded” by a private investigator and that her daughter had been cornered by members of the defendant’s family in hopes that she would recant her story or to at least say that the molestation “wasn’t as bad.”

“Our lives have been impacted in more than a thousand ways,” she said.

Quintanilla was originally charged with 45 counts of sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14. The crimes began in 2005 when the girl was eight.

Two other charges included exhibiting harmful matter to a child and making threats to a victim or witness to dissuade the person from testifying.

Had Quintanilla gone through a trial and been convicted on all 47 counts, he faced 271 years and four months in state prison, according to the prosecutor, Jeff Woodof the Placer County District Attorney’s Office.

But just before a scheduled preliminary hearing on Aug. 3 to determine if the evidence warranted a trial, Quintanilla agreed to plead no contest to 12 counts of child molestation and to the one count of making threats to the victim.

With the defendant making the plea, the 12-year-old victim would be spared the emotional trauma of having to testify on a witness stand in front of the molester, Wood said.

“She will not have to testify to the unspeakable things he did to her,” Wood said. “She can be done with him.”

Just before the judge pronounced sentence Thursday, Quintanilla made an attempt through his attorney to withdraw his plea of no contest. The attorney said the defendant was under the impression he had a chance for probation if he agreed to make the plea.

However, Judge Gaddis reviewed all aspects of the Aug. 3 plea, including reading the transcripts of the proceedings, and he concluded that “there is nothing indicated as to the possibility of probation.”

He then denied the defendant’s motion and the possibility of probation and imposed the prison sentence of 30 years and eight months.

Gaddis also fined the defendant $5,000 and required him to register as a sex offender when he is released from prison.